Tag:speculative invoicing

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The end for the Dallas Buyers Club Dispute and Speculative Invoicing? Or is it Just the Beginning.
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Australian ISPs Ordered to Hand Over Customer Details in P2P Copyright Action
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Downloaded Dallas Buyers Club? The Bill is in the Mail

The end for the Dallas Buyers Club Dispute and Speculative Invoicing? Or is it Just the Beginning.

By Greg Pieris and Simon Casinader

On 16 December 2015, another chapter (and perhaps the final chapter) closed in the long running dispute between the rights holder of the film Dallas Buyers Club (DBC) and six Australian ISPs. Justice Perram of the Federal Court of Australia dismissed DBC’s application for preliminary discovery of the identities of over 4,000 Australian BitTorrent users who allegedly shared copies of the film.

As we reported in April 2015 (see here), Justice Perram initially ruled in favour of DBC ordering six ISPs to disclose the details of 4,726 customers. However, the Court was concerned this information would be used to write to account holders making demands for payments very much excess of what might actually be recovered in any actual suit (a practice known as “speculative invoicing”). To address this concern, the Court adopted the novel approach of making the release of account holder information conditional on DBC submitting for the Court’s approval a draft of the letter of demand proposed to be sent to the relevant account holders.

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Australian ISPs Ordered to Hand Over Customer Details in P2P Copyright Action

Dallas Buyers Club LLC v iiNet Limited [2015] FCA 317

In November 2014, IP Law Watch reported on attempts by the rights holder of the film Dallas Buyers Club to compel Australian ISPs to disclose the identities of BitTorrent users who allegedly shared copies of the film.

On 7 April 2015, Justice Perram of the Federal Court of Australia ruled in favour of Dallas Buyers Club LLC and Voltage Pictures LLC, ordering six ISPs to disclose the details of 4,726 customers.

The judgment has been widely reported in the Australian media as a landmark decision and a game changer in the battle regarding online piracy.  In fact, the kind of order granted by Justice Perram is far from revolutionary.  For many years, civil procedure rules at both state and federal levels have enabled a party to seek orders requiring a third party to produce documents or give evidence as to the identity of a prospective respondent.  There are decisions going back as far as the 1970s in which this kind of preliminary discovery order has been granted (see for example Exley v Wyong Shire Council (10 December 1976, Master Allen, unreported) and Stewart v Miller [1979] 2 NSWLR 128).

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Downloaded Dallas Buyers Club? The Bill is in the Mail

The film Dallas Buyers Club won critical acclaim and earned Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor respectively. Now the rights holder of the film, Dallas Buyers Club LLC, is looking to pursue Australians who it believes have illegally downloaded the film.

The company has issued proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia against iiNet Limited and four other internet service providers, seeking orders to have them disclose the identities of the alleged pirates. iiNet has indicated that it will defend the action. Read More

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